


Cariño

by flyingisland



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, M/M, Pining Keith (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 15:02:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16410722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingisland/pseuds/flyingisland
Summary: In the language of flowers, a camellia symbolizes desire, passion, and perfection. And Keith thinks, not so privately, that these words suit the man who always buys them just fine.





	Cariño

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CaihongHoshi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaihongHoshi/gifts).



> A special thanks to the lovely [epi](http://epiproctan.tumblr.com) for agreeing to beta this story for me!

 

Camellia is a man, six foot even. He’s a wall of muscle with a sweet smile and a soft voice. Camellia is the code name, given to the man who buys these flowers—maybe because of the flowers themselves, or because of his white hair, the pale, soft skin. The dazzling white smile that he beams down at Keith as Keith struggles not to choke on all of the words of adoration that bubble up in his throat when this angel fallen from the heavens tells him, each time, “No bag needed, thanks.”

Keith isn’t sure who first started using the nickname for him. He understands the origins just fine, and he knows that it isn’t abnormal for his peers to call a regular by their most common order, but the name suits him. It meshes well with the ivory strands of his hair, with his pressed, white dress shirts. With his sparkling grin, and the beautiful, graceful way that he moves about, as though floating just above the ground. As though the world is a stage on which he performs, and he’s never been caught out of character.

Camellia’s real name is Takashi Shirogane, but no one knows it but Keith. He’d sneaked a peek at it on the guy’s I.D. the first time that he ventured in here, nearly six months ago. Keith had pretended that he needed it when Camellia used a credit card, and thankfully, he hadn’t questioned it with more than a bend of his perfectly manicured, thick white eyebrows, and a twitch of those beautiful, full lips.

No one really knows why he comes in weekly, why he only buys a small bundle of camellias and goes on his merry way. Why sometimes he’s seen carrying a cardboard cup holder stacked with way too many hot coffees, or toting shopping bags over one elbow as he struggles to skirt the racks of display flowers without knocking them over.

Camellia is six foot even. His driver’s license says that he was born in 1992. He has gorgeous, awe-inspiring, deep dark eyes that are labeled, perhaps incorrectly, as brown on his card. Because sometimes, when the morning light hits them just right, the light catches flecks of silver, diamond white, a kaleidoscope of gem hues that make Keith feel as though he’s a miner trudging through treacherous caverns in search of the natural treasures buried in the stone. He’s struck gold with Camellia—Takashi Shirogane—he knows. He’s a sculpture of a man crafted from marble. He’s the most beautiful human being that Keith has ever laid eyes on before.

And his I.D. doesn’t explain the smooth, caramel texture of his voice, sweet in Keith’s ears. It doesn’t tell of how good he smells, like expensive cologne, how he always pulls back his hand, admiring the receipt that he’s signing before reaching over to hand it back to Keith. His license doesn’t say that he’s always polite. That he never stays long enough.

That he’s perfection incarnate and that it’s been hard for Keith not to accidentally fall in love with him ever since his first short visit became a gradual routine.

But these are all things that Keith has had to learn on his own. The I.D. didn’t warn him that Camellia would always be pleasant and understanding, that he’d be sunshine incarnate, lighting up even the dreariest of days each time that he’s wandered into the flower shop. It didn’t warn him that he’d be just as tongue-tied the fifteenth time that Camellia patronized the shop, just as he was the first.

Keith has navigated this treacherous path of attraction and embarrassment on his own for a long time. And despite how desperately he hopes to someday regain his composure around the guy and stop acting like such a silly, lovestruck schoolgirl, he suspects that he might never be afforded such a luxury. Knowing himself, he can’t imagine ever seeing even the slightest hint of a man so beautiful without immediately feeling as though he might faint.

His coworkers, frankly, are no help at all. Lance, the big-mouthed, absent-minded fool that he is, doesn’t have the time to spend wondering about what Camellia’s “general deal” is, as he’s said himself. Every time that Keith attempts to breach the subject with him, he’s met with a blithe wave of Lance’s hand, that childish, infuriating way that he rolls his eyes when he’s already dismissed a conversation topic, and the flippant, dismissive words that only continue to make Keith angrier as the days go on.

“If you’re so curious about him, why don’t you just ask him out? What, is the big, bad Keith actually afraid of a little harmless monogamy?”

Lance doesn’t have any room to talk anyway, and Keith knows it. He keeps his mouth firmly shut during those times, promptly shoving his proverbial tail between his legs in favor of not losing his job just for the sheer pleasure that he would find in wringing one idiot’s neck. Sometimes he goes and finds Hunk instead. Or the ever-smiling, always pleasant Allura. Or Pidge hiding away in the back room and pretending to trim the thorns from the stalks of the roses for the dozenth time in one shift.

No one seems even remotely interested in Takashi Shirogane, or the mystery of the camellias, or even somewhat dazzled by his charming smile, that rare, Earth-quaking laugh of his. Or really, any of the aspects of his person that have possessed Keith’s attention so completely. It’s mind-boggling, to say the least. He would have thought that someone like Camellia would turn heads wherever he went.

But when he brings him up to anyone else—even the nosy Hunk, even the seemingly omnipotent Allura—they don’t even seem to remember who he is until Keith describes him in simpler terms, words that don’t even begin to express his beauty, or his charm, or any of the reasons why Keith cares about him in the first place.

“You know, the guy who buys the camellias every Monday?”

It’s generally met with a vague gesture of agreement. Even then, even after he makes the effort to explain to them exactly who Camellia is and why they should care about him, as mind-boggling as it is, none of them regale a first-person account or a wondrous, mystified remembrance of where they were the very first time that they witnessed the man, the myth, the legend himself: Takashi Shirogane.

He knows that calling someone by their preferred flower is the usual language of their job, sure. There’s Red Roses, who only comes in once every few months, frazzled and twitching and guilty if Keith has ever met a guilty man before. There’s a gaggle of old ladies called The Lily Ladies—and while there’s something uniquely depressing about selling funeral flowers to old women in bulk, there’s also something charming about the group of them always coming in here together, reliably, on the 5th of every single month.

There are plenty of people that pass through here only once or twice. There are romantics who frequent it, teenagers preparing for whichever dance is in season. There’s a myriad of faces and personalities that Keith couldn’t possibly hope to memorize over time, but flowers, he knows, are always consistent. He can remember someone’s order like the back of his hand, even on the worst days.

But everyone knows, even himself, that it’s not very often that Keith actually remembers someone’s name or their face. Or anything noteworthy about them, if they haven’t given him a good reason to.

He’s thankful, at least, that this new, unexpected turn of events hasn’t inspired some kind of drama in the workplace. The last thing that he’d want, if he’s being honest with himself, is someone like Lance trying to help get him a date. Or someone like Hunk trying to figure out all of the information that he can about this mysterious buyer of camellias, or Allura lingering just close enough to eavesdrop, Pidge smirking at him in that aggravating, knowing the way that she does, already, every single time that he accidentally finds himself ranting about the guy.

Maybe they just care enough that they don’t want to make this harder for him. Maybe, like a mother deer nudging forward her newborn fawn, they just want to allow him the space to stumble on new legs. He’s never dated before in his life. He’s experienced only fleeting attractions that never amounted to much of anything until now. Lance calls him a “nomad” sometimes, raising an eyebrow and grinning in that sarcastic way that Keith hates.

And he doesn’t even have the decency to act embarrassed, every time, when Keith rolls his eyes and tells him, “You mean hermit, right? Nomads didn’t live alone, Lance.”

But it would be nice if literally any of his coworkers cared as much about this mystery as he does. As it is, they continue to send him the same confused, bewildered looks every time that he accidentally brings the guy up. They don’t seem to understand how stunning he is, or how adorable his laughter sounds. They don’t quite connect all of Keith’s musings about the soft tilt of his lips that separates his usual polite smile from the special, genuine happiness that Keith at some rare, wondrous moments has managed to drag out of him.

They don’t seem capable of getting it, and Keith almost wishes that they could talk to Camellia themselves, if only so they’d understand. He knows that this might mean that they’d fall for him too. He knows that more competition isn’t particularly a good thing when he’s considering that the love of his life just might be stopping in every single Monday to buy a bouquet of romantic flowers before leaving him alone to ferment in his self-imposed lovesickness for the remaining six days of the week. He knows that Camellia probably has a partner who he gives the flowers to. Keith can imagine him returning home in the evening or during a lunch break, or even stopping at his partner’s place of work to drop off the flowers before sharing a passionate, romantic kiss straight out of all of Lance’s favorite movies. Smiling in a way that puts even the brilliant, sunshine smiles that he offers Keith to shame.

He knows that, more likely than not, he isn’t even a single, solitary blip on Takashi Shirogane’s radar. He knows that someone far more handsome, more talented, funnier and more clever and less creepy than himself has probably already contentedly took up residence in that part of Camellia’s heart.

But it feels nice to dream about it anyway. It fills the aching monotony of a morning shift at a flower shop with musings far more entertaining than how many carnations they need to order before prom week, or how to arrange the wedding sprays before each new season arrives. It definitely distracts him from whatever hot, new story Lance is prattling on about now, yet again, animated in a way that always manages to make Keith wonder if he’s ever had a bad night’s sleep in his life.

It doesn’t seem likely, and reliably, every new morning, Lance has another tale of lost romance to reminisce that makes Keith feel a whole lot better about the sorry state of his own dating life.

And today, Lance is talking about a girl who works at the bookstore just a few shops down the strip. He’s draped dramatically over Hunk’s shoulder, brows drawn close together, eyes closed tight as he rambles about the rude way that she’d told him that she had a boyfriend when he’d oh-so innocently asked for her phone number.

“But when did you ask for it?” Pidge asks, barely even paying attention as she flips through a few of last night’s receipts in search of a few cents that they were short in the register. “It wasn’t while she was working, was it? Are you really that low, Lance?”

Lance shoves himself up higher in his seat, on the bench that’s usually reserved for customers to relax in while their loved ones might be having consultations with Allura about some custom arrangements in the back office. Hunk is seated close by him, and Keith isn’t entirely sure who sat down first. If Lance draped himself over the first available body, or if Hunk was quick to come to his side and offer comfort the moment he started complaining.

With the two of them, Keith can never be so sure. And he’s too busy right now doing literally anything else to worry about it.

But Lance is glaring at Pidge as he tells her, firmly and higher up an octave in his anger, that there’s nothing wrong with asking a girl out while she’s working if she knows that you work at the same strip. There’s a camaraderie here, he says, a shared knowledge that everyone who works at this place is more than a passing stranger, but maybe not quite a friend.

He says that it’s completely different than a strange man approaching her—has to be less creepy, because she’d made no considerations for her health or safety when she’d turned her nose up at him and basically told him to get lost.

“Would you like it if someone came in here and started hitting on you when you weren’t allowed to say no?”

Pidge still doesn’t look up, but there’s a growing frustration in her voice. Knowing Lance, there’s a fifty-fifty chance that he only continues to argue because he can tell that it’s getting under her skin. Knowing Pidge, she’s totally aware of this, but she continues to converse with him because, secretly, Keith thinks that she enjoys the back-and-forth.

But something about this conversation catches Keith’s attention, and it compels him to speak without thinking. Immediately, all eyes are him, and he realizes only belatedly that he doesn’t talk nearly enough at work for this random, outlandish line of questioning to be lost among everything else, as it often is with someone chatty like Lance.

“What about if you ask someone out while you’re working? Is that weird?”

Pidge pushes a short breath through her teeth. Hunk seems caught between a nervous laugh and a cough that he’s already raised his fist to mask. It seems that Keith has suddenly brought a level of seriousness to this otherwise playful conversation. But before he can remedy this, before he can take his leave for the back room to stave off his embarrassment alone, or apologize and try to excuse it away with an awkward laugh, or a half-baked comment about how he suddenly feels under the weather, Lance is grinning, pushing himself up from the bench and loping, cat-like and all-too cavalier, towards him.

The hand that Lance rests on his shoulder is immediately brushed off. He busies himself with sorting the lily bouquets into dozens, barely even focusing as he ties the ribbon and plastic around them, but trying his hardest to make it look like they require his full attention.

“Keith, buddy, are you still pining after that old guy who buys the camellias?” Keith resists the urge to tell Lance, right to his dumb, assuming face, that Camellia is, in fact, only twenty-six. The oldest person among their group is Keith himself, at twenty, and he definitely doesn’t need someone like Lance talking about age gaps when he’s seen Lance flirting with women who are clearly pushing his mom’s age.

“Listen to me, okay? I’m the master.”

Pidge snorts, and Hunk finally coughs that laugh into his fist. Keith rolls his eyes, but Lance only prickles slightly before he continues on.

“The next time you see that guy, when he hands you his card, put your hand over his while you’re grabbing it. Look up into those big, beautiful eyes of his, and you tell him—tell him this, okay? It’s really important that you say these exact words: Well aren’t you just a tall glass of cold water? And frankly, Camellia, I’m parched.”

Pidge spits a laugh, immediately incoherent as the giggles continue bubbling out of her. Even Hunk is laughing, privately and with much visible guilt, from his spot on the bench. Lance turns to them then, red-cheeked and sputtering his defenses. Keith has never heard anyone use a pick-up line in person before unless they were joking, and he isn’t sure what’s so funny about it.

It’s mortifying, sure, to consider saying those things to someone else. It’s embarrassing to even consider what sort of expression Takashi Shirogane might make if he were to say anything even remotely flirtatious to him.

But he also knows that Lance succeeds at getting dates just as often as he fails at it. He knows that Lance is charismatic and kind, he’s funny—even if Keith himself would die before admitting it out loud—and he’s definitely the kind of person who can get away with saying something so mortifying and completely stupid without actually looking like a fool. Keith isn’t sure how he, himself, might fare in the same situation. Lance reassures him, hissed and frustrated and winded after yelling at both Hunk at Pidge, that it’ll seem “ironic” and “clever” if someone as serious and straight-laced as himself were to say something corny like that, it’s bound to make a memorable impact on whoever is “lucky enough to catch the stone prince’s eye”.

And Keith’s cheeks feel hot again after Lance uses that dated nickname. No one has called him that since high school, and even still, he doesn’t understand where or why it came to be.

But he has too much to think about right now. He doesn’t have time to wonder why anyone in school cared so much about his existence and lack of interest in romantic relationships to actually make up some stupid nickname that caught on a lot better than it should have.

He tries not to think about high school or being crowned “The Stone Prince”. He tries not to wonder why Pidge and Hunk had laughed so much when Lance had suggested that pick-up line. He concentrates only on his thoughts of Camellia, of the words that he can only hope to actually say to him. He works through the rest of his shift methodically, cleaning and restocking, helping customers as they stop in at various points throughout the day.

For now, today is a Friday. Camellia isn’t scheduled to visit them until Monday, bright and early, next week. He has time to think this over and consider the pros and cons. He has time to secretly practice these lines in his bathroom mirror, back at his apartment, when his roommate is busy at work, and he has their shared space all to himself. He can train his features to look cool and “ironic”. He can teach himself to sound clever and confident, as Lance often does when he unloads these lines on unwitting customers who innocently believe that they’re wandering into this store just to buy flowers. Lance has the highest sales average of all of them, he reminds himself.

Obviously, he’s doing something right here.

But today, they’re staffed so heavily because it’s homecoming season. And the later in the morning that it gets, the more people pile in, requesting pins and boutineers of various colors—thumbing through their stock and messing things up so horrendously that Keith feels as though he’s rearranged the store ten times before his shift is through. It’s exhausting work, and he wishes often that he could find himself a job that’s far less public. He isn’t good at talking to people in the way that Lance and Hunk are. He isn’t good at hiding like Pidge is, and his mere presence doesn’t demand the same respect as Allura. He’s a pitiful supervisor. Lance has to save him from the beginnings of a few lectures on behalf of some particularly angry helicopter moms. He swoops in deftly, somehow managing to juggle his own customers and watch Keith’s back at the same time, and Keith realizes, for perhaps the hundredth time since he’s started working here, that he likes these people, his co-workers.

He keeps this job because his peers are his friends. And even Lance, admittedly, is his friend. He knows that Lance feels it too, maybe more privately. He knows that Lance wouldn’t mess up his one shot at love in the last twenty years just to be mean to him.

And so, secretly, he makes a decision.

He’ll take the advice, next time that he sees Takashi Shirogane.

For Camellia, it’s worth the risk of making a fool out of himself, if only so he can say that he tried.

* * *

The weekend is restless and fretful, as the hours pass and he continues practicing his lines. He’s never taken part in any school plays or given big speeches that he cared enough to rehearse before reading aloud to a class. He’s never been anyone but himself, never said anything but the words that conjure themselves up in his head. He finds that he isn’t very good at being a Keith who doesn’t speak his mind. He’s not very good at parroting other people’s speeches while somehow maintaining a naturalness that he knows will be required to pull this off. He finds that speaking someone else’s words feels too unnatural and awkward, and they never manage to roll perfectly off of his tongue as they had when Lance spoke them, no matter how many times he attempts to change his speed, inflection, and the tone in which he practices them.

But he decides that Camellia and himself haven’t spoken enough for the guy to recognize any inconsistencies in his speech patterns. Aside from a warbled “Have a nice day” and a few particularly adventurous, “Thanks for shopping”s, he hasn’t actually had more than a one-sided conversation with Takashi Shirogane since he met him.

Generally, Camellia will say something like, “Nice weather, isn’t it?” and he’ll nod his head dutifully. Or, on less common occasions, Camellia might say, “Man, the weather forecast is looking rough for this week.” and he’ll nod his head morosely.

Their conversations never wander too far from that. They definitely aren’t personal by any means, and there definitely hasn’t been room within them since the two of them started talking for Keith to be flirtatious. He knows, deep down, that it’s probably inappropriate to even consider asking someone out while he’s at work. He doesn’t know if Allura is a strict enough boss to write him up over it, or if she’ll simply roll her eyes and excuse it in the same way that she usually does with Lance.

But at least Lance makes extra sales because of his corny one-liners and generally flirtatious disposition. Keith has a feeling that if this doesn’t go well, he might just end up losing them a very valuable regular customer.

Today, so far, it’s been slow. Homecoming over the weekend kept the rest of the staff busy, but Keith, as one of the only employees who works overtime on weekdays, got the weekend off to relax. Himself and Lance, this morning, are the sole people manning the flower shop, and as they open, Lance chats continuously about some date that he had over the weekend while Keith goes about booting up the register.

It’s boring work in the morning, and he’d never admit that it’s kind of nice to have someone to talk to as he sets about getting everything ready for the day. Lance is complaining that his date showed up twenty minutes late and left early, and how she ignored his good night text, and his following request to meet up again. Keith asks him dryly why he’d even waste his time on a girl who obviously didn’t respect him enough to show up when they scheduled, but Lance doesn’t offer much in response.

When Keith unlocks the doors and flips on the open sign, only then does Lance round him, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder that, for whatever reason, he doesn’t shove off this time.

“So if Camellia Guy shows up today, are you gonna say anything to him?”

Keith’s eyes dart away from Lance’s face and around the shop. He tries to calm his suddenly-risen nerves by thinking about everything that they need to sort and rearrange throughout their shared shift.

And finally, slowly and quietly, he says, “Tall glass of water, I know. I—I’m gonna tell him.”

Lance’s grin, when Keith looks back to him, is so wide and cocky and pleased with himself that Keith finally shoves him off. He doesn’t like feeling as though Lance knows something that he doesn’t, or that he’s better at something as mundane and useless as dating. And frankly, Lance isn’t even good at dating, but he’s still somehow better than Keith is. Which says a lot, Keith thinks, even as he skirts around Lance and begins picking through a few bins of flowers to discard the wilted ones. It says a lot about the sorry state of his romantic life, that Lance, of all people, has somehow managed to surpass him there.

He doesn’t like this feeling at all—the nervousness, the helplessness, the looming sense that his inevitable doom is fast-approaching.

But he knows that he’ll only regret it if he never tries. If someday, Camellia stops frequenting their shop, and he never finds out if he could have potentially been interested if only Keith ever had the nerve to actually ask him.

He continues going about his morning routine. He sweeps the front room, collecting any dust and stray flower petals that might have accumulated on the floor overnight into a wide dustpan that he empties out into the trash can next to the register. He wipes down the counter, then the glass displays and the picture frames depicting happy couples and beaming families holding up varying bouquets of their most expensive flowers. Lance busies himself with taking a tall, sturdy squeegee from the supply closet and dragging it over the windows. He’s talking to Keith about his date again. He admits belatedly that she just-so-happened to be the same girl from the bookstore. Keith isn’t surprised to hear that he eventually managed to get her number. Lance is charming and he can be funny and friendly. People like him, they warm up to him, and they realize eventually that whatever missteps that he might have made in wooing them were accidental in place of whatever reasoning they might have attributed to him at first. He isn’t a sleazy lady’s man, as he might want everyone at work to believe. He’s just like Keith, in a lot of ways—eager and sometimes lonely, and searching for something in another person that might someday make those feelings ease away.

Keith knows that despite Lance’s seemingly consistent “single” status, he’s actually very good at scoring a first date. He isn’t entirely sure how Lance bungles said dates so terribly that there are rarely seconds and never thirds, but Keith isn’t confident enough in his own abilities to think that he might be able to catch Camellia’s attention without Lance’s help.

So he puts his faith in Lance, just this once. He’d never imagine telling him face-to-face, but he knows that Lance has to be the most romantically intelligent person that he knows.

Which, if he really takes the time to consider that sentiment, it’s pretty pathetic. But the sentiment is true regardless, and Keith is desperate enough that he’ll accept any help that he can get.

But today, precisely an hour and a half after opening and right around the general time that Camellia makes his weekly appearances, as always, he doesn’t disappoint. Keith feels his heart shove all the way from between his ribs into his throat, nearly choking on the feeling of it, suddenly filled with stress, his mouth dry, his hands shaking as he rearranges the rose display next to the register for the third time since he got here.

He can see the dazzling white of Camellia’s snowy hair out of his peripherals, but he doesn’t dare look directly at him. His father used to warn him not to stare straight at the sun, had informed him in simple terms that his young brain could comprehend that it would damage his eyes for the rest of his life if he looked at it for too long. And he knows that someone like Takashi Shirogane burns brighter, shines more brilliantly than some old star a billion or so miles away. He knows that watching Camellia now would be akin to witnessing a supernova from just a few feet away, but in place of the blindness and the burns, he’d only earn himself a head devoid of any coherent thought, and a heart that might beat so tremendously that it could burst straight out of his chest at any given moment.

Lance calls from somewhere deeper into the store—obscured by the thick and numerous bundles of various flower arrangements displayed around the floor. He’s welcoming even when he’s calling out, greeting Camellia despite the fact that he can’t see him, surely, and telling him to let him know if he needs anything. Out of the corner of his eye, Keith can see Camellia pausing, glancing about for a moment as though he might be able to spot the owner of that voice from within a bursting bushel of roses, or hiding somewhere in a cardboard display bin of fertilizer. And when his fleeting attempt at looking for Lance yields no results, he turns back to the camellias, placed just in front of the register as they always are. And gradually, painfully slow-motion, his eyes eventually settle on Keith.

Keith jolts when he feels that gaze catch him. He makes an effort to look especially busy, scrubbing his poor, overworked washrag against the pristine and practically sparkling surface of the counter until he’s sure that he might accidentally wear through the semi-gloss coating.

“Good morning,” Camellia says, light and airy and somehow sounding well-rested even given the early hour, “The weather looks like it’s going to be very nice today, doesn’t it? But the sun is setting earlier now. It’s dark by the time I get off of work.”

He laughs, and that musical, wonderful, beautiful laughter only manages to lodge more lead into Keith’s veins. It only makes him feel more alight with restless nerves, and the primal instinct to tuck his tail and run far away from this inevitable situation, this gorgeous man, and all of the lines that he’s practiced endlessly but never managed to memorize, that he should be telling him right now.

The bundle of camellias that Takashi Shirogane reliably, as always, places on the counter sound as though they’re a ton of bricks dropped on concrete. Keith swallows hard, furrowing his brows in concentration as his scattered thoughts struggle to piece themselves together long enough to manage coherent speech.

Camellia is probably taken, he knows that. And asking someone out while he’s dressed in an oversized pink apron with “Allura’s Flowers” printed in loopy, feminine font over the chest isn’t exactly the state of dress that he’d consider to be particularly evoking of the charming, mysterious air that he’d prefer right now. The fact that he still isn’t brave or strong or smart enough to look Camellia in the eyes has surely already removed him from the guy’s radar completely—if he could ever be lucky enough to be considered a romantic candidate anyway, which he knows realistically, he probably never was.

But something—be it cosmic forces engineered specifically to screw him over, or the feeling of being watched from somewhere deeper into the store that he assumes must be Lance’s hidden spying position—compels him to speak up. To put himself out there, at least, so he can finally put this silly crush behind him and move on with the rest of his miserable life.

“Is the price the same as usual?” Camellia’s voice is smooth and even, and every bit as patient as it shouldn’t be right now. If Keith were in his position, he knows that he’d probably turn heel and leave, wondering if the freaky cashier at the flower shop who always ogles him might be toeing the threshold of some kind of botany-inspired mental breakdown. But Camellia is charming even when the average person would grow impatient. Camellia is boundlessly pleasant, agreeable, chipper even when the rain falls so heavily that it’s wetted down his usually carefully sculpted hair, and bled the thin fabric of his dress shirt deep into the indents of stony muscles in a way that makes Keith feel as though he might pass out.

Camellia doesn’t judge him immediately, as the average person might. He stands and waits for Keith’s brain to catch up. He tries to be nice, to be friendly even after Keith’s stood here for a few moments too long, rooted and breathless and still as though Shiro might be a hungry T-Rex and he actually believes that movement will tip him off.

It takes him another moment before he attempts to hand Keith his card. And Keith, just as he extends a shaky hand to take it, stops as his fingers brush against the edge of the plastic. Camellia seems surprised by this, seems to have thought that Keith would grab it just as he let it go. The card drops down to the counter, bounces against nothing but the flat, slippery surface of a table and perhaps an invisible trampoline that God himself installed into the wood just to ruin Keith’s life, before clattering quietly down to the floor.

It lands between Keith’s feet, and instead of reaching down to grab it, instead of simply chalking this whole romantic endeavor up to a tremendous failure and an obvious example of why he should never trust himself to act on his feelings—caught in the moment, in his nerves, in the excitement of potentially finding himself just a little bit closer to getting to know the mysterious and possessing Takashi Shirogane, Keith blurts out the lines that he’s been rehearsing all weekend long.

Or, at least, he tries to.

“A-are you thirsty for some water? I—I’m… uh… parched…”

Keith can’t stop himself from wincing visibly. He can’t stop himself from feeling a real, overwhelming stab of pain shooting from his fluttery belly all the way to the tips of his fingers and toes at the terrible, butchered monstrosity that just crawled out of his mouth and heaved a pathetic final cry before dying prematurely right between himself and Camellia on the counter.

Before Camellia can speak, or laugh, or make fun of him for being such an incredibly socially inept loser who can’t even speak an English sentence correctly, Keith decides that he’ll grab his card from the floor instead. He’ll brush this off and pretend that it never happened. He’ll just take Camellia’s money and send him on his way, then he’ll put in his two week’s notice but stop coming in before next Monday. He’ll avoid ever seeing Camellia again, no matter what it takes. He’ll move towns, find a different apartment with other roommates. He’ll start a new life under an assumed name, and maybe someday, he’ll stop feeling the mountainous shame that’s suddenly settled like a heavy stone just in the pit of his belly.

In his haste and nervousness, because he’s barely paying attention to himself, or Camellia, or anything but how terrible he feels right now, he doesn’t take a moment to step back or even to gauge the distance between himself and the card, or his forehead and the narrow edge of the counter. Today is destined to be the worst day of his life, he knows. Everything that he could do wrong, he’s done already, and he isn’t sure why he’s even startled when he practically flops down to grab the card and instead bangs his head against the counter with a thump so loud and booming that even Lance yells up from the back to ask if he dropped something.

The impact surprises him so much that he loses his balance. And he falls back desperately, stupidly, like a fumbling toddler learning to walk for the first time. He’s on his backside in seconds flat, his head spinning and stinging just where he hit it, his butt numb but slowly easing in a dull ache that he knows he’s going to feel in his tailbone for the rest of the week.

He covers his face with his hands. His cheeks feel as though they’ve caught fire. His heart is pounding so quickly that it feels as though it might explode. He wishes that he were so lucky. He wishes that life or death or God or any other omnipotent being would take even the smallest shred of pity on him and smite him where he sits.

Instead, he groans miserably. He wonders if he can convince Lance telepathically to call an ambulance. Maybe the E.R. bill will be worth convincing Camellia that this whole disaster was caused by some kind of bizarre medical emergency. Maybe, if Camellia believes that the fall caused some kind of situational amnesia and he no longer remembers any of this, he’ll be kind enough to never bring it up again.

No such luck. When he cracks open an eye, peering through the gaps of his fingers, he can see Camellia hurriedly rounding the counter. He’s all but forgotten about his card or the flowers. Concern looks so much prettier on his features than Keith thinks could possibly be legal.

“Oh my God, are you okay? Can I see your head? I work at a hospital, I—I might be able to help.”

Keith feels dizzy and winded, but he’s about ninety-nine percent sure that it has nothing to do with hitting his head. It’s tempting to admire Camellia when he’s suddenly crouched so close, but he knows that he’ll seem comatose if he risks staring at him for too long. He doesn’t know how to tell the guy in even semi-articulate words that he’s just too damn beautiful for his own good. He isn’t sure if he’ll ever be eloquent enough to express to him that it’s just very difficult to be reasonable when he finds himself in the presence of such a perfect human being.

Instead, he drops his hand and averts his gaze. Camellia prods a finger against his forehead that feels like ice against his heated skin. And he stops himself, barely, from collapsing right here and now, overwhelmed and far too strung out as he struggles to conceptualize the knowledge that right now, in reality, Takashi Shirogane is touching him. And he’s close. And he’s worried.

This isn’t a dream. He isn’t going to wake up to the cruel cry of his alarm in five minutes. Camellia is near enough that he could touch him too, or kiss him, or just lift his eyes and breathe in the vision of the only man who’s ever made him so stupid that he’d potentially maimed himself.

“I should probably tell you that I’m not a medical professional,” Camellia says, ghosting his fingers one more over what must be a growing dark mark on Keith’s skin, “I’m an accountant for a hospital, but I do know standard first aid. That’s… what the flowers are for, you know? I put them at the front desk every week, but… I’m not sure what my co-workers are going to say when I tell them that someone almost hurt themselves selling them to me today.”

His laughter is gorgeous, his smile is invigorating. Keith decides that he’d willingly take on five hundred sharp cornered desks if only it meant being allowed to witness such a phenomenal display five hundred more times.

“You can understand me, right? Can you see how many fingers I’m holding up right now?”

Keith gapes. He can see the three fingers just fine—no double images, no blurry vision. But he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to say so out loud. He clears his throat, drawing in a deep breath before snapping his head away. It’s the only way that he’ll be able to talk now, he knows. It’s the only way that he’ll be able to convince the charming and innocent and oh-so life-ruiningly attractive Camellia that he really doesn’t need to take a trip to the hospital unless being an idiot is a new disease that they can actually diagnose now.

“I—it’s three, I’m… I’m okay. I didn’t know that you worked at a hospital.”

He makes a point of focusing all of his attention on the trash can that sits just a few inches away. It’s getting a little too full now. He should probably empty it when he gets the chance. And he needs to check the windows to make sure that Lance didn’t get lazy again while washing them. He should count stock, too, since Pidge is off today. He should make sure that the thorns are cut from all of the rose stems.

Thinking about work calms him down. It reminds him that this is where he feels the most comfortable, the most in control. Camellia can think that he’s a moron all he wants, but it will only break his heart. He can’t take this place away from him too. He can’t make him feel like a stranger in his own place of work.

He straightens up somewhat, turning his gaze back to Camellia. He falters almost immediately, neutered from the wolf that he felt like just seconds ago to a yapping, shivering chihuahua. But he’s brave enough from his little pep-talk to look Camellia in the eye without losing his train of thought. And he takes advantage of this swiftly, calculated and as careful as he can be in his current state, as though now and only now is his final chance to fix things now that he’s tarnished his reputation so badly.

“I was trying to flirt with you earlier, but I’m not very good at it.”

Camellia’s sudden look of surprise is almost worth everything else that led up to it. His hands hover in the air between them, caught there as though he might reach out and fiddle with Keith’s blossoming bruise again, and as though they’re just as likely to drop down to the floor beneath his knees. His cheeks are pinker, too, and it looks nice on him. The shade of it suits him well, but so does the paleness of his skin. So does the narrow scar stretched out over his nose, the tuft of snow-colored hair that hangs between his eyes, the thick, white brows that bow together and the slackness of his open lips.

Keith’s breath rattles out of him before he speaks again. He shoves his hands against the floor at his sides, pushing himself up to sit straighter, to find himself at a height just that much closer to matching Camellia’s, to give himself the illusion of being somewhere within the same league.

“I think you’re nice, and you look nice, and… I like you. Like, what I know about you. And I think I’d like anything that I learned about you, so… I’d like to take you on a date. Maybe… maybe not today or this week, since we both… have jobs, but—but this weekend? I have weekends off. If you’re an accountant you probably have weekends off too, right?”

It’s a mess and a total word vomit. He almost winces again as the words prattle off in the silent air between them. He can envision Lance perfectly now, hidden somewhere among the lilies and the chrysanthemum, shaking his head in shame at the shambles of Keith’s bleak dating life. Cursing himself internally for ever trying to help out a guy who is so horrifically hopeless that he can’t even manage to flirt correctly.

But Camellia’s surprise melts into something even more wonderful. He smiles, first with a small twitch of the corners of his lips, then, so wide and dazzling that Keith almost feels as though he might have needed to put on sunscreen to withstand the holy light of it. He laughs then, tipping his head down and rubbing a finger over his nose. His cheeks are splashed with dark scarlet, his shoulders are slack, his nice suit askew, his entire being suddenly more disheveled than Keith has ever seen it, but somehow, surprisingly, it only makes him more charming in Keith’s eyes.

“Y-yeah, I’d like that,” he says, “The guys at work are going to be really happy to hear that I finally got a date with the cute florist.”

And it’s absurd and unexpected. It’s the last thing that Keith ever imagined that he’d hear, spoken in that angelic voice, laced with that harmonious laughter. This side of Camellia, this shy and eager, clumsy person, Keith wonders if this is the man who he’ll someday grow to love. He wonders if his guilty fantasies about coffee dates might extend to dinner. If they can go shopping and see movies. If they’ll have fun, and Takashi Shirogane will continue to be kind.

He wonders if he’s in way over his head, if he’ll ever stop feeling as though he might die if Camellia aims another well-timed grin his way. If the nervousness will ebb away to affection, to comfort, to a stability that he’s never known in his life, and never thought to expect from another person until he met someone as stunning and earnest and genuine as Camellia.

Takashi Shirogane extends his hand again, just after he pushes himself up from his knees to stand.

“You can call me Shiro, by the way. Do you have a pen and paper so I can write down my number?”

Keith takes the offered hand, and Shiro helps him to his feet. Keith can feel that Lance is watching somewhere from the hidden corners of the store. He can see the sun growing brighter and higher in the sky as the early morning grows closer and closer to the warmth of the afternoon.

Shiro writes his number in a neat, uniform hand. He’s careful as he etches the letters of his name and the digits, as though he wants to make sure that Keith can read it without any mistakes. He buys his camellias. He tells Keith that he’s looking forward to a call.

And as the bells jingle behind him, as Lance finally reveals himself and demands that Keith tell him everything that happened, Keith can’t stop himself from grinning, and laughing, and feeling so high and weightless that he’s surprised to find his feet still planted firmly on the linoleum.

Camellia is a man, six foot even. He’s handsome and charming, and just a little bit awkward when faced with outlandish confessions and dinner date confessions from a flower shop clerk who just hurt himself while attempting to flirt. He works at a hospital as an accountant. He’s talked to his co-workers enough about “the cute florist” that they’ll be happy to hear that he finally got a date with him.

His laughter is liquid gold. His smile is brighter even than the sun, hanging high in the sky, just outside of the windows.

And his number is tucked safely in Keith’s pocket.

It’s enough to make even the ache in his backside and ugly bruise that bleeds into Keith’s skin throughout the day feel worth it.

It’s enough that, even when Lance laughs at him, even while he explains how terribly he botched the pick-up line, he can’t help but feel as though everything went even better than he could have ever expected.

He got Shiro’s number, at the very least. So maybe, after all of the pain, the embarrassment, the hopeless practicing, he isn’t nearly as bad at this whole relationship thing as he might have originally thought.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this story was a blatant ripoff of the title of a song by my favorite band: [Cariño by The Marías](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myvaAKFyg2I)! It sets a good vibe for this story too, so I’d highly recommend giving it a listen! 
> 
> This story was written for CaihongHoshi for the Keith Birthday Exchange! It was a lot of fun being able to write Keith pining after Shiro, and I really hope that you enjoyed it!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!


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